http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=128

“My image of theology is not ‘A safe stronghold is our God’. It is the exodus of God’s people, on the road to the promised land of liberty where God dwells. For me, theology is not an inner-church or postmodern dogmatics, designed only for one’s own community of faith. Nor is it for me the cultural study of the civil religion of bourgeois society. Theology springs out of a passion for God’s kingdom and its righteousness and justice, and this passion grows up in the community of Christ. In that passion, theology becomes imagination for the kingdom of God in the world, and for the world in God’s Kingdom.”

~Jurgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=129

I finished working and reading this evening so made a bit of dinner and popped in a DVD. It’s the third Pirate’s of the Caribbean, which I hadn’t seen before. About fifteen minutes into it I turned it off. Couldn’t hear the dialogue.

It was too loud outside.

In the forest the trees sing in the wind. With rain and gusts like we’re having tonight they are a mighty chorus, whistling and singing and clapping their hands in wet celebration.

So there is only to listen to the repeated refrain. It’s much more entertaining than Pirates anyhow.

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2008/01/05/neo-pentecostal

In 1901 students in a class taught by Charles Parham began speaking in tongues. This was something they sought, and something which in their mind proved the power of the Holy Spirit. It was an evidence. The evidence of the Holy Spirit, as illustrated in Acts 2, Acts 10, and then in Topeka, Kansas was considered speaking in tongues.

Such an evidence as this gained traction. More people prayed in such the way the Topeka students prayed, more people began speaking in tongues, some indeed recognizable as regular languages it is claimed. Then such a thing as this had a trip down route 66, to Los Angeles where on Azusa Street, it is known, this claim to the evidence of the Holy Spirit began to do a curious thing. It exploded. It was given a name, Pentecostalism, and this name has traveled from the dusty streets of the City of Angels to all corners of the world.

So there must be something to Charles Parham’s discovery. And there certainly is. For instance read Numbers 11:22-24:

So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp.

And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”

And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!”

But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!”

And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets. The story of this passage isn’t about all the people becoming prophets, however, it’s not even about a small number of people becoming prophets. Moses, you see, was rather overworked. He was the man who went up the mountain and came down with a bright face and a lot of authority. All of it. Question his authority and you might, like Miriam, get a spot of leprosy. Moses, even with all of his honors, was still but a man, and not a man superempowered to do all the work that authority must do in a group this big. He was spending a lot of his time on minutiae. A man such as Moses should not be immersed in minutiae. He had things to do, like keep everyone’s eyes on the prize.

Keeping their eyes on the prize was a particular problem as the people tended to be rather grumbly. And what with all of Moses work, and his devotion, and whatnot, he got fairly fed up with being between the rock of God and the hard place of Israel. He felt trapped and asked God to kill him. God said he’d rather not, but that he would show him a thing or two. So he had Moses call 70 elders and God spread the wealth a little bit. The Spirit was poured out over the whole bunch. And when the Spirit came, well these men got a bit filled up. Overfilled really. They weren’t enough in themselves and the Spirit overwhelmed them. It was like walking out into a bright day after spending years in a dark cave. The eyes get overwhelmed and they squint. When the Spirit comes, the soul gets overwhelmed and things begin to happen.

That’s the sign of the Spirit being poured out on a person. But, that’s not the reason for the Spirit. God sent the Spirit here so that Israel would have a bit more leadership variety, all while knowing everyone is on the same page. This is important as having leaders turned to different pages often means a whole mess in the making. Take Korah for instance. The earth sure did.

The Spirit is the only way of the work of God, and without the Spirit there is only a muddle. But that’s really the key point. The Spirit is about the work of God, not giving us the goods to put on a show for ourselves or for anyone else.

Which brings us back to the gift of Tongues and Acts 2. Now, it’s certainly not the case as some authoritarian people might suggest that the gift of tongues is gone. It’s in the lists, and it serves a purpose. So did prophecy in the old days, and today. But, the ecstatic overwhelming quality in which the souls becomes filled and overfilled into a frenzy is a sign of the Spirit’s coming, but it’s not a sign of the Spirit’s staying. Tongues is not the goal of God. Neither is prophecy.

What is? Well, the quick response from many is salvation. Which is true in a way. But that’s not really it either. That’s just a beginning of the beginning. Salvation is sort of like, if I can engage in a terrible analogy, buying a ticket at Disneyland. It costs a lot, usually children are more eager for it and pay less, but the payoffs are nice because there’s the Jungle Cruise, Indiana Jones, and Star Tours inside. The payoff, you might be surprised to know, is not in buying the ticket. I mean there are Disney themed pictures and even the occasional Mickey Mouse or Goofy wandering about. That’s not why anyone would want to go to Disneyland and if you suggested going to Disneyland soley to buy a ticket that would be silly, what with the hassle of parking and driving all the way there. No, you buy a ticket to do something more, and salvation is a ticket to something more.

That something more is what the Spirit is really about.

God is in the restoration business. He has created us in his image, but we’ve gone and distorted his likeness. As Mark Twain once said, “I was made merely in the image of God, but not resembling Him enough to be mistaken for Him by anyone except a very near-sighted person.” Yet God is wanting to renew that resemblance. The Spirit comes for that very purpose, to lift us up, and guide us into becoming wholly sanctified. Jesus opened the door to this process. The Spirit presses it forward in our very lives, taking our salvation and making into a whole lot more. Wesley called this sanctification. The Eastern Orthodox call it theosis. These are but words to describe the fact God thinks we are worth quite a bit, and able to be quite a bit more than our present wallowing selves.

He once walked in the evening breeze with a man and a woman. He’d like to do so again. The Spirit makes us pleasant and inviting company for such a thing as this, restoring our souls towards real wholeness so that we think right, feel right, listen right, and feel joy right. Our wan selves can’t handle the fullness of the Spirit, so we’re given time to change. Part of what we have to learn, part of the extensive remodeling of the Spirit is our learning how to relate. God, you see, values relationship, being in eternal relationship and creating in terms of relationship. We have lost this, becoming selfish, isolated, indulgent people who are always gunning for our rights or expectations. Always seeking to fulfill our desires by using other people. The way of the Spirit, however, is in mutual giving and mutual receiving so that we live for others as they live for us.

That’s what we see at the end of Acts 2. The Spirit poured out. There were tongues. There was evangelism. It is only at the end of the chapter we get to the heart of it all. The Spirit comes, and people begin to instinctively respond in the fullness of community. They interact with one spirit for they are filled with the One Spirit who unites and shares and values all equally while expressing divine qualities diversely in each.

Of course saying that Acts 2 is a fine community is a common thing. That’s the goal of every shameless idealistic group of people who leave their churches to live in a commune and do things “right”. Only that’s not quite it either. See, the thing at Acts 2 isn’t about this group of people who decided to be selfless and share. They were simply expressing the continuation of the fullness of the work of the Spirit in their lives. In other words, they didn’t think about it, they were just doing it. It was as natural to them as such as thing is unnatural to most of us. Natural in the fullest sense of the term, being part of our truest nature. But, we don’t do this, and we don’t see this. But we don’t see a lot of things. That doesn’t make it untrue, that just goes to show our present status on the ladder of God’s restoration.

Should we see the fullness of the power of the Spirit in our own lives. Should we experience the kind of renewal and the kind of enlightenment we read about, then its not a matter of our choosing then to sell our property and give a great deal to the poor. We just will do those sorts of things. It’s a reflection of the Spirit, not a working towards the Spirit.

That’s what Charles Parham had wrong. He thought it was about the tongues. He thought it was about the fireworks and the parade, when really there’s a lot more to it. Inasmuch as he got it wrong, inasmuch as many of those who came after him missed reading to the end of the chapter and so cut off, or grieved the Spirit in whatever way, they missed out on seeing in their own lives the fullness of the Spirit, the fullness of themselves, in a gathered community that reflects the ultimate reality of God among us.

We miss out on such things for much the same reason. But, there’s no reason to make an artificial attempt. There’s only to do those sorts of things the earliest church did and pray the Spirit comes upon us in power, and then not get distracted by the shiny things but press on in the Spirit so as to see the real work. It’s not something we do. It’s something we become. That’s the gift of the Spirit, to us and to this world.

I suspect William Seymour got a lot more of this than did Charles Parham. Not all of it. He was entranced by the initial works as well. But, there was a freedom to press on and see what happened, a freedom which too many denied to him. Sad. But that’s the topic of another post.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=130

A Christmas family picture:

Pa Oden, Pat Oden, Ma Oden, Jon Oden, Michelle Oden

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=131

Having Confessed

Having confessed he feels

That he should go down on his knees and pray

For forgiveness for his pride, for having

Dared to view his soul from the outside.

Lie at the heart of the emotion, time

Has its own work to do. We must not anticipate

Or awaken for a moment. God cannot catch us

Unless we stay in the unconscious room

Of our hearts. We must be nothing,

Nothing that God may make us something.

We must not touch the immortal material

We must not daydream to-morrow’s judgement–

God must be allowed to surprise us.

We have sinned, sinned like Lucifer

By this anticipation. Let us lie down again

Deep in anonymous humility and God

May find us worthy material for His hand.

~Patrick Kavanaugh

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2008/01/15/where-have-i-be

For the last week and a half or so I’ve been working on a major project. It’s the paper that I’ll be presenting at the Society of Pentecostal Studies conference in March titled “An Emerging Pneumatology: Jurgen Moltmann and the Emerging Church in Conversation”. Basically it’s an academic version of It’s a Dance where instead of having a few folks chatting at a pub I basically finally got to writing out the underlying foundations of the book as found in Gibbs and Bolgers Emerging Churches and in the writings of Moltmann. It’s a little bit of what was in my head that got me to start writing It’s a Dance, drawing the connection between the various traits and the theological study of the Holy Spirit.

It took a week and a half to write but it’s been on my mind since the middle of December. I had to really get back into the mindset of the topic and that meant a lot of re-reading and some new reading, expanding a little bit of my Moltmannia.

This all involves a little bit of a trick that I’ve yet to sort out but really need to learn how to do so. In writing that I had to get very academic again, but I didn’t want to post in that kind of style and I didn’t want to let go that style in order to find a more approachable cadence. So I stopped posting while I was getting my mind back in shape. It was hard this time, I think, because it’s been so long since I had to get myself academically focused. As I keep my feet a little bit more in that world, hopefully I’ll find it easier to pop back and forth.

As it seems a lot of doors are opening in the academic direction, more than the pastoral (though there’s a wee conversation about that too I need to bring up), my goal is never to dwell in the ivory tower but really to keep writing what I’ve been writing, and focus on books that can engage the broadest possible audience.

Thanks for all your encouragement as I keep at this.

Cheers, Patrick

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=132

For the last week and a half or so I’ve been working on a major project. It’s the paper that I’ll be presenting at the Society of Pentecostal Studies conference in March titled “An Emerging Pneumatology: Jurgen Moltmann and the Emerging Church in Conversation”. Basically it’s an academic version of It’s a Dance where instead of having a few folks chatting at a pub I basically finally got to writing out the underlying foundations of the book as found in Gibbs and Bolgers Emerging Churches and in the writings of Moltmann. It’s a little bit of what was in my head that got me to start writing It’s a Dance, drawing the connection between the various traits and the theological study of the Holy Spirit.

It took a week and a half to write but it’s been on my mind since the middle of December. I had to really get back into the mindset of the topic and that meant a lot of re-reading and some new reading, expanding a little bit of my Moltmannia.

This all involves a little bit of a trick that I’ve yet to sort out but really need to learn how to do so. In writing that I had to get very academic again, but I didn’t want to post in that kind of style and I didn’t want to let go that style in order to find a more approachable cadence. So I stopped posting while I was getting my mind back in shape. It was hard this time, I think, because it’s been so long since I had to get myself academically focused. As I keep my feet a little bit more in that world, hopefully I’ll find it easier to pop back and forth.

As it seems a lot of doors are opening in the academic direction, more than the pastoral (though there’s a wee conversation about that too I need to bring up), my goal is never to dwell in the ivory tower but really to keep writing what I’ve been writing, and focus on books that can engage the broadest possible audience.

Thanks for all your encouragement as I keep at this.

Cheers, Patrick

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=133

“Life in the Spirit is a life in the ‘broad place where there is no cramping’ (Job 36:16). So in the new life we experience the Spirit as a ‘broad place’—as the free space for our freedom, as the living space for our lives, as the horizon inviting us to discover life.” Yet, in the history of the church there have been again and again restrictions placed upon this ‘broad place’ some for reasons that make sense in attempts to deter heresy, other times for reasons that can only be characterized as anti-Christ as they assert personal or corporate power for reasons of individual gain. Most often, and consistently through the last two thousand years, the restricted place of the church has not been due to some kind of intentional nefarious rejection of God, but rather due to uncritical assumptions of the broader culture in each era, leading to wholly non-Spiritual boundaries. Churches in which racism or sexism dominate are restricted places. Churches in which the rich dominate poor, or the powerful dominate the powerless are restricted places. Restricted not for those who are the aggrieved, restricted for the aggressors and for the whole society, unable to take up the whole work of the Spirit because of these inherent, societal, restrictions.

As Moltmann writes “‘The broad place’ is the most hidden and silent presence of God’s Spirit in us and round about us. But how else could ‘life in the Spirit’ be understood, if the Spirit were not the space ‘in’ which this life can grow and unfurl.” The dismantling of institutional racism, the new emphasis on equality between men and women, the growing awareness of first world responsibility to the third world, and the increasing concern for the environment have all broken the bonds of restriction that have silently fought against the constant mission of the Spirit. So it is no surprise that now, in this era of new openness, we can see new movements that in their freedom reflect the freedom that is God’s kingdom, movements that echo in practice what Moltmann emphasizes as traits of the broad place of the Spirit. “We explore the depths of this space through the trust of the heart. We search out the length of this space through the extravagant hope. We discover the breadth of this place through the torrents of love which we receive and give.” Only those contexts which freely open themselves to this continual discovery can expect to learn and to express a holistic pneumatology.

This is not a new reality of the Spirit or a new movement of the Spirit but is, in essence, the heart of what was spoken of by the Prophets and then experienced in the early church beginning on Pentecost. In this way, we could call the movement described by Gibbs and Bolger not only the emerging church, but indeed a form of neo-Pentecostalism in which a holistic pneumatology is embraced through a new, liberating freedom for living. “God’s Spirit encompasses us from all sides and wherever we are (Ps. 139). Christ’s Spirit is our immanent power to live—God’s Spirit is our transcendent power for living.” In embracing this reality in full, individually and communally, in unity and in diversity, the church emerges into the comprehensive vision of the kingdom of God.

Thus I concluded my paper on Moltmann and the Emerging Church.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=134

In the “phrases that I never thought I would say but yet are utterly descriptive” department comes this phrase I just used in an e-mail: “comma ennui”

I’ve suffered from it for years. I blame the public school system.

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Sin. The process that God uses to bring a person to Spiritual maturity. Spiritual gifts. Something else.

What would you most be interested in and read a book on?

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What Kind of world do you want?



Raising money for worthy causes, led by Five for Fighting.

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I mentioned a while back that I was chosen to participate in the Amazon.com Vine Voices program. That means each month I get a list of items and can choose two to review. It’s a promotional strategy Amazon is trying, and that means I don’t pay a thing for what I get. Lovely. I’ve been dutifully receiving and writing since August, but I’ve not been noting that here. I figure if I’m going to get free stuff I should promote what I’ve been looking at even a little more. Ever since my book came out I’ve realized even more how nice reviews and promotions are. Gives me a warm feeling to know someone has paid attention to what really is close to my heart. This is probably much less the case for companies who sent me electronic items, but I figure it’s only fair to start posting all my reviews here, not just the ones on creative works. So, I’ve some catching up to do. I realized early on in literature classes that reviews and critiques are likely my least favorite form of writing, and I’m not particularly great at them. But, I write what I can. And so here it is.

I’ll start with my most recent review.

Hundred in the Hand (Joseph Marshall’s Lakota Westerns) by Joseph Marshall

“Most people who are of the Earth live according to the truth that comes from the Earth,” the old woman went on. “One truth is to take only what you need. It is a truth that was not always known, but we know it now. A nation of many people needs more land on which to hunt. We took this land because we were many and needed it. We took it from the Crow people. They fought us, but they understood that we are a nation of many more people. So they moved aside, not because they were afraid, but because they were wise… But we do not need to take any more of the land. The Long Knives are different. They take what they do not need, and I think some of us are learning their ways.” (Hundred in the Hand, p. 167)

It is a reality of human culture that we see the world through our own values and priorities. We excuse and promote and honor and abuse to fit our perspectives, making those who compete against us the villains and those who fight for us the heroes. The story of the American West has long been told according to the perspective of the white settlers who came to find what they saw as new land, and new opportunities, to spread out and find a new freedom. Yet, there were people in that land who had already found their own freedoms and life.



Hundred in the Hand is the story of the people who were already there, people who were being pushed aside as more and more white settlers and soldiers came into the land. Although, a little foreign perspective at first Joseph Marshall’s skilled story telling quickly draws the reader into the world of the Lakota and we begin to understand the events of the late 18th century from a different set of values and a different set of priorities.

At first the prose would catch me every once in a while, however I soon realized that this was being told as more of an oral tale, and in my head I tried to read it as though I was sitting and listening, rather than sitting and reading. The cadence and the voices began to live and I felt a part.

The story is not complex. It is mostly about various ambushes and preparations for these, with subtle character studies and gentle scenes that give insight into the Lakota perspective. But, in all of this we are smoothly drawn into the perspective of the Lakota, who faced the white soldiers with courage, and a little confusion.

Yet, this is not the whole of the book. About 100 pages in Marshall decides to bring in a white perspective, and so on and off through the rest of the book we occasionally see the story from the eyes of a white man, neither soldier nor settler who involves himself in various ways into the tale. Honestly I felt that while well written this ‘white’ perspective became a weakness for the book. Seeing the story solely through the eyes of the Lakota was a valued experience, and it seemed just when I was thinking along with them, I was pulled back, back into the typical stories and typical perspectives. I wish I could have gone through the whole book seeing the white settlers as true foreigners, and felt even more thoroughly the perception of the Lakota.

Yet, that is really the only negative. Hundred in the Hand is an engaging story that really is a valued addition to the genre. I look forward to reading the next book in the series.

I gave the book four stars.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=138

“Theology is for me a suffering from God and a passion for God’s kingdom. For me this is a messianic passion, because it is possessed and moved by presence of the crucified Christ. For me theology springs from a divine passion–it is the open wound of God in one’s own life and in the tormented men, women, and children of this world; from the accusation Job threw at God; from Christ’s cry of forsakenness on the cross. We are not theologians because we are particularly religious; we are theologians because in the face of this world we miss God. We are crying out for his righteousness and justice, and are not prepared to come to terms with mass death on earth.

But for me theology also springs from God’s love for life–the love for life that we experience in the presence of the life-giving Spirit and that enables us to move beyond our resignation and begin to love life here and now. These are also Christ’s two experiences of God, the kingdom of God and the cross, and because of that they are the foundations of Christian theology, as well: God’s delight and God’s pain. It is out of the tension between these two that hope is born for the kingdom in which God is wholly in the world and the world is wholly in God. “Seek first the Kingdom of God…”

~Jürgen Moltmann, A Passion for God’s Reign

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=139

If we compare the two ways of knowing, it is easy to see that modern men and women need at least a balance between the vita activa and the vita contemplative, the active and the contemplative life, if they are not to atrophy spiritually. The pragmatic way of grasping things has very obvious limits, and beyond these limits the destruction of life begins. This does not apply only to our dealings with other people. It is true of our dealings with the natural environment too.

But the meditative way of understanding seems to be even more important when it is applied to our dealings with our own selves. People take flight into relationships, into social action and into political praxis, because they cannot endure what they themselves are. They have ‘fallen out’ with themselves. So they cannot stand being alone. To be alone is torture. Silence is unendurable. Solitude is felt to be ’social death’. Every disappointment becomes a torment which has to be avoided at all costs.

But the people who throw themselves into practical life because they cannot come to terms with themselves simply become a burden for other people. Social praxis and political involvement are not a remedy for the weakness of our own personalities. Men and women who want to act on behalf of other people without having deepened their own understanding of themselves, without having built up their own capacity for sensitive loving, and without having found freedom towards themselves, will find nothing in themselves that they can give to anyone else. Even presupposing good will and the lack of evil intentions, all they will be able to pass on is the infection of their own egoism, the aggression generated by their own anxieties, and the prejudices of their own ideology.

Anyone who wants to fill up his own hollowness by helping other people will simply spread the same hollowness. Why? Because people are far less influenced by what another person says and does than the activist would like to believe. They are much more influenced by what the other is, and his way of speaking and behaving. Only the person who has found his own self can give himself. What else can he give? It is only the person who knows that he is accepted who can accept others without dominating them. The person who has become free in himself can liberate others and share their suffering.

~Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=140

This is one of those rare treasures of a book that hardly seems real at first. Primary documents are the foundation of history. For me this is especially true when the documents are not official political or military papers but are instead a reflection of the average person within a certain context or era.

And that is what these are. Every Day Lasts A Year: A Jewish Family’s Correspondence from Poland is a collection of letters from Poland to America, from a variety of family members to a young man who had emigrated not long before. These notes of various lengths and topics span from November 1939 to early December 1941. America entered the war. Joseph Hollander’s family went silent.

They were Jewish.

But this isn’t a book about the Holocaust or World War II or Polish history. This is a book about a family living in the midst of a crisis, trying to live as they could. It is a book about the contrasts between history on a grand scale and mundane details of daily life. In these all too often mundane details, however, the specter of Nazism is ever present, even if not mentioned.

The letters themselves take up about 180 pages of this 280 page book. They are well edited and formatted so as to make for easy reading, presented without commentary except for the occasional footnote clarifying a point of history or making note of a translation or transcription issue. These are not great literature, but that is the point. They are the kinds of letters sent by family members to one of their own far away. And they are amazing insights into life.

The first hundred pages is made up of three essays. The first by the son of the letters recipient. He tells the story of Joseph, his father. While the prose is not the best, the story is well told and quite interesting. We get to know the one who is so present and yet so silent through the later laters. It is an engaging story, not only because he was able to escape Poland but also because of the immense legal troubles he had when he got to the States. The US tried to deport Joseph back to Europe just when Europe was exploding into war.

The second two essays are much more academic in tone. The first details the Nazi rule in Cracow throughout the war. The second is broader in scope, giving a background to Jewish life in Poland before and during the war.

Overall this is an incredible book, amazing for anyone interested in World War II, Holocaust studies, social history, or Poland. My only critique, and it’s a picky one, is that I felt the book was a little unsure who to target as an audience. It is very accessible to a popular audience interested in the topic, but at times the essays feel a bit too rigid and stolid. It takes a while to get to the actual letters, and at that point it is a huge shift in reading style. I almost would have liked to have the letters at the beginning with the two academic essays at the end for reference.

Again, a picky complaint. Overall, Every Day Lasts a Year is an extraordinary book, mostly because those we meet in it were not extraordinary at all but just regular men and women caught up by hell on earth.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=141

Snow flurries started last night. Got quite cold. Got out my camera and took some pictures. Thought I might as well post a few other recent pictures from the recent weather.

It’s winter in the mountains. Love it.

(more…)

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2008/01/24/an-emerging-pne

Like I said, I’ll be presenting an academic version of my book in March at the Society of Pentecostal Studies conference at Duke University. I recently finished the paper and submitted it, and will be adapting the presentation from this thirty page paper. Basically, it’s addressing the same core issues I deal with in the book, but instead of being conversational it’s much more focused and intellectual. Basically, it’s what I had in my head as I was writing, taking the outline Gibbs and Bolger provided, along with some other emerging church writing, and showing how their efforts match up to academic theology, which makes the points into points about the Holy Spirit. In this case I focused on the work of the theologian Jürgen Moltmann, who graciously contributed some kind words about It’s a Dance that’s printed on the back cover.

Here’s the end:

“Life in the Spirit is a life in the ‘broad place where there is no cramping’ (Job 36:16). So in the new life we experience the Spirit as a ‘broad place’—as the free space for our freedom, as the living space for our lives, as the horizon inviting us to discover life.” Yet, in the history of the church there have been again and again restrictions placed upon this ‘broad place’ some for reasons that make sense in attempts to deter heresy, other times for reasons that can only be characterized as anti-Christ as they assert personal or corporate power for reasons of individual gain. Most often, and consistently through the last two thousand years, the restricted place of the church has not been due to some kind of intentional nefarious rejection of God, but rather due to uncritical assumptions of the broader culture in each era, leading to wholly non-Spiritual boundaries. Churches in which racism or sexism dominate are restricted places. Churches in which the rich dominate poor, or the powerful dominate the powerless are restricted places. Restricted not for those who are the aggrieved, restricted for the aggressors and for the whole society, unable to take up the whole work of the Spirit because of these inherent, societal, restrictions.

As Moltmann writes “‘The broad place’ is the most hidden and silent presence of God’s Spirit in us and round about us. But how else could ‘life in the Spirit’ be understood, if the Spirit were not the space ‘in’ which this life can grow and unfurl.” The dismantling of institutional racism, the new emphasis on equality between men and women, the growing awareness of first world responsibility to the third world, and the increasing concern for the environment have all broken the bonds of restriction that have silently fought against the constant mission of the Spirit. So it is no surprise that now, in this era of new openness, we can see new movements that in their freedom reflect the freedom that is God’s kingdom, movements that echo in practice what Moltmann emphasizes as traits of the broad place of the Spirit. “We explore the depths of this space through the trust of the heart. We search out the length of this space through the extravagant hope. We discover the breadth of this place through the torrents of love which we receive and give.” Only those contexts which freely open themselves to this continual discovery can expect to learn and to express a holistic pneumatology.

This is not a new reality of the Spirit or a new movement of the Spirit but is, in essence, the heart of what was spoken of by the Prophets and then experienced in the early church beginning on Pentecost. In this way, we could call the movement described by Gibbs and Bolger not only the emerging church, but indeed a form of neo-Pentecostalism in which a holistic pneumatology is embraced through a new, liberating freedom for living. “God’s Spirit encompasses us from all sides and wherever we are (Ps. 139). Christ’s Spirit is our immanent power to live—God’s Spirit is our transcendent power for living.” In embracing this reality in full, individually and communally, in unity and in diversity, the church emerges into the comprehensive vision of the kingdom of God.

I’m not going to post it here, for various reasons, but if you’d like to see a copy of it let me know: patrickoden at gmail dot com.

http://itsadance.net/perichoresis/2008/01/24/conversation/

One of the thoughts I have in mind about this site is to post excerpts. Some folks have described reading It’s a Dance like sitting at a table at the Columba overhearing the conversation. In a conversation it’s sometimes hard to keep quiet, but when reading a book that’s sort of how things go. Nate can’t hear you after all, even if you scream and wave your arms wildly trying to get his attention.

So posting excerpts would be a way to open up the conversation, giving you a chance to respond and ask your own questions or make your own points. I figure I can substitute for Nate if stays quiet.

The key, though, is having people join in on the conversation. I’ve already written the excerpts and pursued the interaction on paper. That’s what the book is about. So, I guess I’m curious if there are folks out there who would participate, and if not then I’m going to hold off on this bit of the blog until there’s a few more folks around here.

Truth be told I’ve not been around here myself regularly, so hopefully getting back into the habit of posts will stir things up a bit and encourage folks to swing by more often.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=142

I do, in fact, live in Southern California.

Though you might not know it from the pictures I took today.

A new gallery of today’s winter pics coming soon.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=143

The LA Times has a look at contemporary communal Christianity.

Very interesting article all around.

It highlights one of my points about this movement. So many get involved in the ideals and patterns but have utterly no familiarity with the writings of monastics, especially non-Western versions, such as Eastern Orthodox. However, so many of the issues and problems found in contemporary versions have been wonderfully addressed in past centuries. To be sure earlier centuries had their own issues and problems but they also had their own wisdom, insights, and understanding that is really absolutely helpful. Certainly such reading has been absolutely transformational for me. The Spirit worked in the Bible, the Spirit worked in the early Church, the Spirit worked and works since then.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=144

I’ve a wee article up over at Barclay Press, part of their ongoing series on personal devotions.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=145

Outside the front door, this morning:

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=146

For those who have followed my writing and schooling a bit you’ll know that I really liked, and really used, the book Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger. Their influence goes back a bit earlier. In my very first quarter at Fuller in 1999, and maybe my first class of my first quarter, I took Evangelizing Nominal Christians taught by Eddie Gibbs, and TAed by a very conservative looking Ryan Bolger. Early in 2006, I audited a class with Ryan Bolger on emerging churches, and this class thrust me into really writing It’s a Dance.

He and Eddie Gibbs, have then, been my primary, academic, exposure to this movement over the years and helped shape my thinking on church before the emerging church was named. I owe a lot to their research and their questions.

All this to say, Ryan Bolger is being interviewed over at Shapevine tomorrow, January 31st, at 1pm my time, which is 4pm on the East Coast, and other times in other places.

He’s well worth checking out.